LONDON — Not many cyclists win a race, and then hang their head over their handlebar just beyond the finish line, crushed in disappointment.

But that is BMX racing, where sometimes what you've done lately is not enough.

Tory Nyhaug, a 20-year-old from Coquitlam, won the fifth and final run of his Heat 2 grouping, and yet - excruciatingly - missed out on reaching the semifinals by one lousy point.

“I won the last lap, I'm really proud of myself, I fought the whole day and it just didn't work out,” Nyhaug said, constantly wiping the sweat that burned into his right eye.

“The racing was crazy, everyone's going fast. I had a lot of fun but I'm pretty disappointed not to make it through,” he said. “I have no regrets ... this is probably the coolest race I've been a part of. I'm going to remember it forever.”

Cool, indeed. Oh, a penny for Pierre de Coubertin's thoughts if the founder of the modern Olympic Games were alive to see BMX, with its pulsating music, rainbow-coloured jerseys, crash helmets and crashing bodies.

First time viewers imagined The Hunger Games. What a spectacle. To the delight of a sun-drenched crowd, nearly every heat featured a spectacular crash, bodies catapulting over handlebars, bikes flying off from riders as if fired from a launcher. In the third heat of the first run, seven riders crashed at once, a domino special with one rider tumbling, the six behind him crashing overtop. To their credit, all seven got up and finished the heat.

“Crashing is part of the sport,” Nyhaug said, “it sucks when it happens, but that's the way it is.”

A couple of unlucky breaks put Nyhaug in catchup mode earlier early. After finishing third in his first run, Nyhaug crashed in the second when he clipped the rear wheel of Dutch rider Jelle van Gorkom, who lost his balance in front him. Nyhaug suffered scrapes and bruises, but nothing like the sort of race injuries that caused him to have his speen removed just two months ago.

As for what the surgery may have cost him in terms of a medal shot here, Nyhaug said: “It's impossible to know, things happen and you can't go back and change it, you just have to accept it and move on.”

With his mother, father, sister and his girlfriend in the stands watching, Nyhaug was seventh in the run in which he crashed; he got squeezed by a group of riders causing him to lose speed and finish sixth in the third run. With the top two of his group having already qualified, Nyhaug had to race two more runs to try to catch one of the other two spots from his heat. Sadly, his third-place finish in run four and his win in run five left him one point behind Latvia's Rihards Veide for the fourth and final qualifying spot.

Knowing he had to beat Veide by a couple of spots, Nyhaug turned his head at the finish to see Veide right behind him. He realized then his Olympics were over.

“I knew I had to beat some guys by a couple of spots,” Nyhaug said. “I looked behind me and saw Veide made it and, you know, congratulations to him, I wish him the best of luck.”

Of course, Nyhaug will be back for more, vowing to return for the 2016 Games in Rio. Short term, he will compete in the Canadian championships in Abbotsford, and then has a final World Cup event before he takes a break from the bike.

Considering what he has been through - nearly a month of hospital time and a long road back to simple bike riding following surgery - just getting to the start line was a victory for Nyhaug.

“Everything else was extra,” he said. “I thought I was going to make it all day. I had a couple of bad moments where I got hung up on the outside, but that's BMX. You can't be upset about that.

wscanlan@ottawacitizen.com

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